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No end to Ontario mother’s grief as son’s missing organ adds to tragedy

It was common practice to for coroners to return bodies to their families after autopsy with parts missing — without telling the families. The Ontario government is now trying to remedy this by returning thousands of organs to families — a campaign that for this mother caused more grief than closure.

Mona Meilleur says she cannot lay her son, Maxim Meilleur, to rest until she knows what happened to his brain, which was retained after his autopsy in 2007 at the Sudbury Regional Hospital, now known as Health Sciences North. (Family photo)

Resting in a white plastic container that looks like an ice cream tub are 18 pieces of Maxim Meilleur’s brain.

The container sits with an urn of his ashes next to his mother’s bed as it has since last September, when the green “blocks” holding thin slices of brain tissue were returned to her by the Ontario Forensic Pathology Service.

But exactly what happened to the rest of Maxim’s brain remains unclear.

And until she knows for sure, Mona Meilleur cannot put her son to rest.

“There is no way of grieving and moving on. It’s killing me,” said Meilleur, her voice choked by tears as she spoke from her home in Moonbeam, north of Timmins, Ont. “You have to really live it to understand. It’s a very specific pain.”

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Maxim Meilleur was 19 when he was killed in a drunk driving crash on Jan. 13, 2007. To determine the cause of his death, an autopsy was ordered at the Sudbury Regional Hospital (now known as Health Sciences North).

But when Maxim’s body was returned to his family for cremation, unbeknownst to them, his brain was missing. It was kept for further testing by a neuropathologist because of a criminal investigation into the crash.

Retaining body parts is common practice when coroners need more time. And until two years ago, it was also common practice for doctors to deliberately keep that information from families.

An amendment to the Ontario Coroner’s Act made in 2010 means that family members must now be informed when body parts are retained.

And a year ago the government decided, in a bid for transparency, to reveal that 4,000 organs removed during autopsies dating back to the 1970s have been sitting in medical storage.

Since that time 780 cases have been opened and 18 organs have been “repatriated” to families. The phone line set up has received 2,870 calls — a number that includes multiple calls from the same family.

The program was slated to end June 14, but earlier this month the act was amended to allow an additional five years for families to decide what to do with their loved one’s organs.

But for Mona Meilleur, who heard about the retained organs on the radio last June, that option is not available.

When she worked up the nerve to call the chief coroner’s office, her worst fears were confirmed. Maxim’s brain had been retained — but it was too late to get it back, she was told.

“We don’t have it anymore,” she says she was told. “The hospital disposed of your son’s brain in November 2008.”

As she pushed for more answers, she got a different response from Dr. Michael Pollanen, Ontario’s chief forensic pathologist: the brain was disposed of according to hospital policy between November 2007 and January 2008.

Then came the twist that broke Meilleur’s heart.

Pollanen told her that some tissue samples from Maxim’s brain were still available and could be returned to her.

A funeral home employee drove to Sudbury to pick them up, as Meilleur sat in their office, waiting.

He returned with a container. Inside were two plastic bags containing the 18 samples “like a handful of cheerios in a bag,” she said. “It was awful.”

It’s likely that Maxim’s brain was cremated — that was the hospital policy at the time, says Dan Lessard, a spokesperson at Health Sciences North. Organs were typically disposed of three months after a pathologist’s report was completed.

But Meilleur can’t understand why she hasn’t been given a specific date or any proof of how Maxim’s brain was disposed of.

Lessard would not say whether the hospital tracked the disposal of organs at the time and whether they could provide the date and method of disposal of a retained organ.

The amended legislation means that retained organs are now carefully tracked in a database, says Pollanen. Families will not have to endure the same frustrations as Meilleur.

But, despite Pollanen’s apology to her, Meilleur is not ready to forgive.

She continues to seek answers about the fate of Maxim’s brain from the hospital and the chief coroner’s office, and is hoping to launch a lawsuit.

“It was not their decision to destroy my son’s brain. I will never, ever come to terms with that,” she says.

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